


Distances

by grim_lupine



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Jealousy, Pining, Sibling Incest, isurrender prompt fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-17
Updated: 2010-02-17
Packaged: 2017-10-22 18:03:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grim_lupine/pseuds/grim_lupine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Janie always says she was born first so she could scope the place out for Aaron. Make sure it was all safe. All joking aside, Aaron can almost believe that; after all, it’s what she’s been doing for him his whole life. His family is a crazy, wild mess, and he loves each and every one of them; there’s something in all of them that he connects with individually. But they all know, they’ve always known—Janie is his whole world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distances

-

\--

Two days before Janie’s supposed to move into her dorm, she sneaks into Aaron’s bedroom in the middle of the night. He isn’t sleeping, just staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Just trying to imagine what it’ll be like coming home to a place without Janie.

“Move over,” Janie whispers, nudging Aaron, and he shifts until there’s room for her under the covers. She fits against his side like a puzzle piece locking into place.

“Why are you still up?” he asks softly, breath stirring the bangs lying haphazardly on Janie’s forehead. She shrugs, doesn’t say anything for a moment.

“What are you going to do without me, kid?” she asks, half-joking, half painfully earnest. It’s the question they’ve been dancing around for nearly a year now, ever since Janie realized she has a future to plan and it’s closing in on her fast, and no matter how you slice it, Aaron’s going to be left behind.

Aaron closes his eyes. “I’m sure I’ll manage somehow,” he says, trying for casual. Neither of them mentions how his voice cracks halfway through. “Maybe Lisa Baker will ask me to prom without you there to threaten her away.”

Janie makes a disgusted noise against his chest. “You’re too good for that vapid little princess,” she says firmly, and tangles her fingers into his. “You’re too good for all of them.”

 _Then who does that leave me?_ he doesn’t say. There are other things they dance around, and now isn’t the time to sweep them all out from under the rug.

He falls asleep listening to the sound of his sister breathing, familiar and comforting, just one more thing he’ll have to learn to do without.

*

The house is too empty. Strangely enough, this is what sticks with Aaron the most. The activity level in the house has been in a steady decline for years, as slowly all his siblings leave, but he’s always had Janie with him. Always, always, it’s been the two of them. Their mom used to joke that she had two sets of twins instead of one, only Janie was so eager to see the world that she came out a year ahead.

Janie always says she was born first so she could scope the place out for Aaron. Make sure it was all safe. All joking aside, Aaron can almost believe that; after all, it’s what she’s been doing for him his whole life.

His family is a crazy, wild mess, and he loves each and every one of them; there’s something in all of them that he connects with individually. But they all know, they’ve always known—Janie is his whole world.

Janie calls every day for the first two weeks; she chats with their mom and dad for a few minutes, and then Aaron takes the phone and disappears up to his room, grabbing at all topics they can talk about so she won’t hang up yet. He never wants her to hang up. He wants her _home_.

“Lisa Baker sink her claws into you yet?” she always asks, and he always laughs, more because it’s their inside joke than because it’s actually funny.

“No, you seem to have scared her away for good,” he says, and lets her amused noise sink into him, warming him from the inside.

“Well, if you haven’t found a date by the time prom rolls around, just let me know,” Janie says, “I’ll go with you, I’ve got your back.”

Aaron’s breath catches in his throat. It’s the kind of thing a sister should be able to say to her brother, teasing and friendly, and it shouldn’t carry all these inescapable tones of wrongness.

Aaron didn’t go to prom last year. Janie’s boyfriend took her, and Aaron—he told his mom he was sick and stayed home, shut himself up in his room and painted in a frenzy, slashing great jagged lines of color across the canvas until it looked like it had been stabbed and left for dead.

“Janie, I have to go,” he says, and clears his throat so he sounds less raw. He clenches his hand into a fist at the sound of silence on the other side of the line, feels his nails bite into his palm.

“Yeah,” Janie says, her voice sounding weary. “I love you, Aaron,” she continues gently, and he mumbles something back and hangs up.

He stares at his hands for a long moment, a strange buzzing in his ears. There’s something wrong with him. He shouldn’t—this is _not_ what he’s supposed to feel. Janie is his best friend, confidante, protector; the one he paints for, the one who believes in him, the one who tells him he’s meant for greatness.

Janie’s his sister, and isn’t that just the crux of this whole damn problem?

*

One day, a couple of months later, she calls to talk to him and lets him blabber about his art project for about ten minutes, but he can tell there’s something waiting on the tip of her tongue. Something he isn’t going to like.

“And Ms. Davis says my portfolio should be complete with just a few more pieces. What’s wrong, Janie?” he asks, switching topics midstream. He doesn’t doubt for a minute that she’ll keep up with him.

Janie laughs, a little oddly. “Nothing gets past you, does it, Aaron?” she asks, then trails off into a hesitant silence. “I met someone,” she says at last, a strange note of defiance in her voice. “A guy. I—I like him a lot, Aaron.”

Aaron breathes out, the sound unusually harsh to his ears. There is no one who can read the nuances of his sister’s conversations like him, and he knows that _I like him a lot_ really means _this guy could be the one_. The one who will take her away. The one who will become her life, because Aaron isn’t there, he _isn’t there_ to fix this so that it’s _JanieandAaron_ like it always has been.

“Oh,” he says, and wonders why he can’t feel his fingers.

Janie’s breathing sounds a little shaky too. “His name’s—” she starts, and before he knows what he’s doing, Aaron hangs up.

He doesn’t want to know that. He doesn’t want a name to make this real.

He stares at the phone for a few minutes like it might jump up and bite him, but it never rings. Aaron ducks into the bathroom and splashes cold water on his face, then straightens up and studies himself in the mirror. This is the face of a son, a younger brother, an artist. This is the face of someone with secrets. This is the face of a boy who wishes and prays, _needs_ to be different.

This is the face of someone who is left behind.

Aaron pinches the skin at his ankle to keep himself grounded, and calls Janie back. “Hey, sorry about that, I guess the call must have been dropped,” he says in a voice that would sound casual and cheerful to anyone else.

Janie isn’t everyone else.

“It’s all right, Little Bit,” she says, sounding gentle and a little sad, a little tired; Little Bit’s what his family used to call him because he was born tiny, stayed tiny for so long. It’s nothing like what he wants to hear from her now.

“Listen, I have to go,” he says, barely aware of what he’s saying, hoping that it hits a semblance of normality. Her voice is still ringing in his ears when he hangs up, and he shakes his head to try and get it out. It doesn’t work. Nothing will. Janie’s as much a part of him as his right hand, and there’s no clean break for the two of them. Just this painful, lingering pulling-away.

It’s still killing, just a slower kind.

*

Winter in Michigan alternates between picture-perfect-pretty, and a howling, snarling mess of wind and bone-chilling ice. Every day Aaron bundles himself into his giant coat, tugs on his hat and gloves and wraps his scarf around his neck, but it isn’t enough to keep him fully dry. He comes home after school shaking snow everywhere he walks, and the first thing he does when he gets inside is make himself a cup of hot chocolate.

The marshmallows are sitting forlornly in a crumpled bag in the pantry, because no one likes them but Janie. Aaron shakes a couple into his cup and pokes them until they melt completely. Someone has to eat them now, and it isn’t going to be Janie.

“Things have to change, and you’re going to have to get used to that,” he says to his cup, before he realizes he’s talking to a couple of marshmallows. He shakes his head and takes his cup upstairs to his room.

Janie tries to call him twice that day. He doesn’t pick up.

He doesn’t really know which one of them he’s punishing, Janie or himself. Maybe it works out the same both ways.

*

Christmas is always noisy. Everyone comes home for Christmas, lugging too many presents and boyfriends and girlfriends and any friends that look lost for the holidays. There’s always room at the Hadley house. Eva and Rebecca left their home early enough that they’re the first to show up, followed by Michael and Ryan the next day. Aaron smiles more than he has in a while, basking in the feel of a house returned to life. Link and Karan can’t make it, obviously, but they Skype in and show off the view from their balcony in Italy.

Every time the doorbell rings, Aaron runs to be the first one to open the door. “Sweetheart, are you waiting for someone or something?” his mom teases, and Aaron just grins brightly in response. It’s _Christmas_ , and the only thing he wants is for his sister to walk in that door.

When she does walk in, just Janie with a duffel bag and a smile on her face, Aaron finds his way into her arms before he can even say her name, and it’s like she was never gone at all.

“Missed you, Little Bit,” she whispers into his ear, voice a little choked, and somehow the nickname doesn’t sound childish when she’s saying it in _that_ tone of voice; it sounds like she loves him, plain and simple.

“Glad you’re home, Janie,” he whispers back, and wonders if she can hear his heart beating double time to the sound of her name.

*

It’s two in the morning and Aaron’s lying awake in bed, tracing the edges of the leather bracelet Janie clasped around his wrist earlier that evening. “That’s so you don’t forget me when I’m in Illinois,” she had said teasingly, and Aaron heard _that’s so you don’t forget that I love you_. He pressed a kiss to her cheek and fought to keep from lingering there.

He tucks a finger into the leather band, now, and studies the curls of his name carved there. _Aaron_ ; and, underneath, when he flips it inside out: _love, always, Janie._

She hasn’t said anything about why she came alone, why she didn’t bring anyone with her, and Aaron doesn’t want to ask. He knows his sister. He can see the sooty smudges of heartbreak under her eyes, and he thinks if he had that moron who was so unbelievably idiotic that he gave _Janie_ up in front of him now, he could murder him in a heartbeat, with no effort and a smile on his face.

There’s a soft tap at his door, and before he can say anything, it opens and Janie slips inside, grinning conspiratorially. “Want to get a midnight snack?” she asks, arching a brow, and Aaron laughs quietly.

“It’s not exactly midnight anymore, Janie,” he points out.

“Semantics,” Janie says dismissively, and folds her arms and stares at him until he crawls out of bed to follow her (she’s never had to try all that hard to convince him to follow her anywhere). They creep downstairs and head for the cookies; Janie pours him a glass of milk and drops his cookie right inside, just the way he likes it.

Aaron licks the remnants of a chocolate chip from his lower lip, and remembers all the other times they’ve done this. This is their own Christmas tradition, and Aaron’s pretty sure his mom leaves the cookies out so visibly because she knows they’ll come looking for them.

He catches Janie staring at him fondly and raises his eyebrows in question.

“You baby, you can’t even eat properly,” she says affectionately, and brushes a trace of milk from his mouth with the edge of her wrist; he stills, painfully aware of the slow drag of her skin over his lips. He holds his breath and turns his head slightly, lips parted, just breathing against Janie’s wrist. Janie’s little smile fades away slowly, but she doesn’t pull back and she doesn’t look away, and Aaron leans forward an infinitesimal amount until the press of his mouth can’t be called anything but a kiss.

“Aaron,” Janie says, so softly she’s mouthing his name more than anything else, and Aaron can’t help himself, he stumbles into her blindly, catches the warm wet taste of her lips, parted open for him like he’s never belonged anywhere else (and he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t _want_ to belong anywhere else in his life, he’s only Janie’s, he’s only ever been Janie’s). He cups her chin in one hand, tipping her head upward so he can kiss her deeper, fall into her taste and helpless sounds and the fresh scent of her hair and never crawl out again; for one beautiful, heady instant, she kisses him back, tucking her hand under the hem of his shirt, a scalding touch against his lower back. For one instant he has what he’s wanted for what feels like his whole life, like all he has ever wanted is to hold her _this_ close and let himself fall.

Janie pulls away, breath coming fast; she kisses him again, close-mouthed and chaste except for the way he can see her mouth shining wet and a little swollen, and he can’t help the hurting little noise that tumbles out of him. Janie steps back, mouth crumpling slightly, and she says “ _Aaron_ ,” like a plea, a half-groan (and a small part of him thinks triumphantly, she _does_ want this, she _does_ ), and she brings her hands up to his chest to hold him away, like she needs the distance between them or she might give in again.

Her eyes are loving and tormented, every twisted heated thought he’s ever had reflected back at him, and she doesn’t say _We can’t do this_ , but he hears it all the same.

“I know,” Aaron says, because he does, he _does_ , he’s always known that the thing he wants most is the one thing he’ll never be allowed to have, but it’s almost enough to know that—it isn’t only him. “I know,” he says again, his tongue too thick for his mouth, his lips swollen tight and hot, and he says in a rush before he can convince himself not to, “You’ll always have me, Janie, you know that, right? You’ll always—I’m _yours_.”

“Aaron,” Janie says, voice a sob-laugh, eyes wet but crinkled up at the corners by her smile, “you idiot, I know that. I’ve _always_ known that. Some days it’s all that keeps me going.”

He brushes away the wetness below her eyes with his thumb, pulls her into his arms and tucks her head under his chin. “I’m yours, too,” she whispers into his chest, a secret from her lips directly to his heart. “I’ve never been anyone else’s.”

He could go a thousand lifetimes with just those words to keep him warm, and he would be happy. It’s enough.

“Love you,” he says softly, a little wistfully, and nothing else he will say in his life will ever resound with so much truth.

\--

-


End file.
